The realtor turned and looked at me.
“Oh hello, Dave,” he said. “I was just showing Mr. Pogue the properly here.”
“I'd like to thank the gentleman for helping my daughter out of the coulee,” I said.
“It was my pleasure,” the man with the buckshot eyes said, his mouth grinning, his head nodding.
“Mr. Andrepont, could I talk with him in private a minute?” I said.
“I beg your pardon?” he said.
“It'll take just a minute. Thank you,” I said.
“I see, well, let me know when you're finished, sir.” He walked toward his car, averting his eyes to hide the anger in them.
“You're Emile Pogue,” I said.
“Why not?” The voice sounded like it came from rusted pipe.
“You get around a lot. Exercising out at Pecan Island, showing up at the house next door. What's your interest, Mr. Pogue?”
“I'm retired, I like the weather, I like the price on this house.”
“Why is it I think you're full of shit?”
“Be fucked if I know.” He grinned.
“I'd like to ask a favor of you, take a ride down to our jail with me, we had a little problem there.”
“I was planning on having an early dinner with a lady friend,” he said.
“Change it to candlelight. Put your hands behind your head, please.”
“You got to have a warrant, don't you, chief?”
“I'm not big on protocol. Turn around.”
When he laced his fingers behind his neck his muscles almost split his coat. I rotated his left hand counterclockwise to the center of his back and pushed it into a pressure position between his shoulder blades. His upper arm had the tension and resistance of a wagon spring.
“Move your right hand higher, no, no, up behind your ear, Mr. Pogue.
That's right,” I said.
I cuffed his right wrist and moved it clockwise to his spine and then hooked it up to his left. I could see the cruiser coming up the road under the oak trees. I walked him down the sloping lawn to meet it, past the realtor, who stared at us open-mouthed.
“Is it true Sonny Marsallus popped a cap on your brother?” I said.
“Sounds like you left your grits on the stove too long,” he answered.
I rode in the back of the cruiser with him to the department, then took him down to my office and hooked him to the D-ring inset in the floor.
I called the sheriff and Kelso, the jailer, at their homes. When I hung up the phone, Pogue was staring at me, his eyes taking my measure, one shoulder pulled lopsided by the D-ring. He gave off a peculiar smell, like testosterone in his sweat.
“We're going to have to wait a little bit,” I said.
“For what?”
I took out my time sheet from my desk drawer and began filling it in.
We'd had a power failure earlier and the air-conditioning had been off for two hours.
“Wait for what?” he said.
I heard him shift in his chair, the handcuff clink against the steel D-ring. Five minutes later, he said, “What's this, Psy Ops down in Bumfuck?” His sports coat was rumpled, his face slick with heat.
I put away my time sheet and opened a yellow legal pad on my desk blotter. I uncapped my fountain pen and tapped it idly on the pad.
Then I wrote on several lines.
“You were an instructor at an Israeli jump school?” I said.
“Maybe. Thirty years in, a lot of different gigs.”
“Looks like you managed to stay off the computer.”
He worked his wrist inside the cuff.
“I'm maxing out here on this situation, chief,” he said.
“Don't call me that again.”
“You ever fish with a Dupont special, blow fish up into the trees? You cut to the chase, that's how it gets done. Who you think runs this country?”
“Why don't you clear that up for me?”
14 o
“You're a smart guy. Don't make like you ain't.”
“I see. You and your friends do?”
He smiled painfully. “You got you a good routine. I bet the locals dig it.”
Through my window I saw the sheriff, Kelso, and the night man from the jail out in the hall. They were watching Emile Pogue. Kelso's eyes were distorted to the size of oysters behind his thick glasses. He and the night man shook their heads.
“We selling tickets? What's going on?” Pogue said.
“You ever work CID or get attached to a federal law enforcement agency?” I said.
“No.”
“Somebody with insider experience kidnapped a man out of our jail. They murdered him out at Lake Martin.”
His laugh was like the cough of a furnace deep under a tenement building.
“Don't tell me, the black guy looking out of the fishbowl has got to be the jailer,” he said.
Kelso and the night man went down the hall. The sheriff opened my door and put his head inside.
“See me on your way out, Dave,” he said, and closed the door again.
“It doesn't look like you're our man,” I said.
“I got no beef, long as we get this thing finished .. . What you writing there?”
“Not much. Just a speculation or two.” I propped the legal pad on the edge of the desk and looked down at it. “How's this sound? You probably enlisted when you were a kid, volunteered for a lot of elite units, then got into some dirty stuff over in ”Nam, the Phoenix Program maybe, going into Charlie's ville at night, slitting his throat in his sleep, painting his face yellow for his wife to find in the morning, you know the drill.“
He laughed again, then pinched the front of his shirt with his fingers and shook it to cool himself. I could see the lead fillings in his molars, a web of saliva in his mouth.
”Then maybe you went into poppy farming with the Hmongs over in Laos.
Is that a possibility, Emile?“
”You like cold beer? At the White Rose they had it so cold it'd make your throat ache. You could get ice-cold beer and a blow job at the same time, that's no jive. You had to be up for it, though, know what I'm saying?“
”You should have gone out to Washington State,“ I said.
”I'm a little slow this evening, you got to clue me.“
”That's where your kind end up, right, either in a root cellar in the Cascades or fucking up other people's lives in Third World countries.
You shouldn't have come here, Emile.“ I tore off the page on my legal pad, which contained a list of items I needed for the bait shop and couldn't afford, and threw it in the wastebasket. Then I unlocked his cuffed wrist from the D-ring.
He rose from the chair and his nostrils flared.
”I feel like I'm wrapped in stink,“ he said.
”If you need a ride, a deputy will take you wherever you want,“ I said.
”Thanks, I'll get a cab. Can I use your John? I got to wash up.“
I pointed toward the men's room, then I said, ”Let me ask a favor of you, Emile.“
”You got it.“
”You're a pro. Don't come through the wrong man's perimeter.“
”The house next to yours? Who the fuck wants to live on a ditch full of mosquitoes?“
He went down the hall and pushed through the men's room door. The light from inside framed him like a simian creature caught in the pop of a flashbulb.
I worked open the window to rid the office of the peculiar odor that Pogue left behind, like the smell of a warm gym that's been closed for days. Then I called home and went inside the men's room. It was usually clean and squared away, but around one basin soap and water were splashed on the mirror and walls and crumpled paper towels were scattered all over the floor. I walked down the darkened hall to the sheriff's office.
”Where's Pogue?“ he said.
”Gone.“
”Gone? I asked you to see me before-“
”That's not what you said.“
”I was going to put a
tail on the guy. I just called the FBI in Lafayette.“
”It's a waste of time.“
”Would you care to explain that?“ he said.
”His kind don't disappear on you. I wish they would.“
”What are you talking about, Dave?“
”He's evil incarnate, Sheriff.“
Bootsie and Alafair and I had a cold supper of chicken salad sandwiches, bean salad, and mint tea on the redwood table in the backyard. The new cane in my neighbor's field was pale green and waving in the sun's afterglow; he had opened the lock in his irrigation canal and you could smell the heavy, wet odor of the water inching through the rows.
”Oh, I forgot, Dave. A man named Sonny called while you were gone,“
Alafair said. She had showered and put on makeup and baby powder on her neck and a dark pair of blue jeans and a lavender blouse with primroses sewn on the sleeves.
”What'd he have to say?“
”Nothing. He said he'd call back.“
”He didn't leave a number?“
”I asked him to. He said he was at a pay phone.“
Bootsie watched my face.
”Where you going tonight?“ I said to Alafair.
”To study. At the library.“
”You're going fifteen miles to study?“ I said.
”Danny's picking me up.“
”Danny who? How old is this kid?“
”Danny Bordelon, and he's sixteen years old, Dave,“ she said.
”Great,“ I said. I looked at Bootsie.
”What's the big deal?“ Alafair said.
”It's a school night,“ I said.
”That's why we're going to the library,“ she said.
Bootsie put her hand on my knee. After Alafair finished eating she went inside, then said good-bye through the window screen and waited on the gallery with her book bag.
”Ease up, skipper,“ Bootsie said.
”Why'd you call me that?“ I said.
”I don't know. It just came to mind.“
”i see.“
”I won't do it,“ she said.
”I'm sorry. It's fine,“ I said. But I could still hear that name on the lips of my dead wife, Annie, calling to me from the bed on which she was murdered.
”What's troubling you, Dave?“ Bootsie said.
”It's Marsallus. We sat on the story about the body we pulled out of the slough by Vermilion Bay. It was the guy Sonny parked a couple of rounds in.“
She waited.
”He doesn't know we've got a murder charge against him. I might have to set him up, the same guy who possibly saved my life.“
Later, Bootsie drove to Red Lerille's Health and Racquet Club in Lafayette and I tried to find things to do that would take me away from the house and Sonny's call. Instead, I turned on the light in the tree, spread a cloth over the redwood table, and cleaned and oiled an ARij rifle I had bought from the sheriff and a Beretta nine-millimeter that Clete had given me for my birthday. But the humidity haloed the light bulb and my eyes burned with fatigue from the day. I couldn't concentrate and lost screws and springs in the folds of the cloth and finally gave it up just as the phone rang in the kitchen.
”Was that your kid I talked to?“ Sonny said.
”Yes.“
”She sounds like a nice kid.“
I could hear traffic and the clang of a streetcar in the background.
”What's up?“ I said.
”I thought I ought to check in. Something wrong?“
”Not with me.“
”I heard about what you did to Patsy Dap,“ he said.
”Are you in New Orleans?“
”Sure. Look, I heard Patsy got out of jail in Houston and he's back in town. The guy's got the thinking processes of a squirrel with rabies.“
”I need to talk with you, Sonny.“
”Go ahead.“
”No, in person. We've got to work some stuff out.“
”You put me in the bag once, Dave.“
”I kicked you loose, too.“
He was silent. I could hear the streetcar clanging on the neutral ground.
”I'll be in the Pearl at ten o'clock in the morning,“ I said. ”Be there or stay away, Sonny. It's up to you.“
”You got something on Delia's murder?“
”How can I, unless you help me?“
”I eat breakfast at Annette's on Dauphine,“ he said.
I rose early in the morning and helped Batist open up the shop, fire the barbecue pit, and bail the boats that had filled with rainwater during the night. The sky was clear, a soft blue, the wind cool and sweet smelling out of the south, and I tried to keep my mind empty, the way you do before having surgery or entering into situations that you know you'll never successfully rationalize.
He looked good at the table in Annette's, with a fresh haircut, in a lavender shirt and brown suit with dark stripes in it, eating a full breakfast of scrambled eggs with bloodred catsup and sausage patties and grits off a thick white plate; he even smiled, his jaw full of food, when Helen and I came through the entrance with a murder warrant and a First District NOPD homicide cop behind us.
He kept chewing, his eyes smiling, while I shook him down against the wall and pulled the nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson from the back of his belt and hooked up each of his wrists.
Then he said, ”Excuse me, I almost choked on my food there. Don't worry about this, Streak. A Judas goat has got to do its job.“
14 6
Chapter 15
ON THURSDAY MORNING JULIA Bertrand walked into my office, her tan face glowing with purpose. She sat down without asking, as though we were both there by a prearranged understanding.
”Could I help you, Julia?“
”I have a complaint,“ she said, smiling prettily, her back erect, her hands uncertain.
”What might that be?“
”It's prostitution, if you ask me. Out by Cade, I'm talking about.“
One hand fluttered on her thigh, then remained motionless.
”By Cade?“
”I drove our maid home yesterday. She lives on the dirt road by this bar. You know the one I'm talking about.“
”I think I do, Julia.“
”There were white men walking with these black women back to these trailers.“
When I didn't respond, she said, ”Dave, I'm not a prude. But this is our community.“
”Two doors down, there're a couple of guys inside you can talk to.“
”I suspect one of them is the same gentleman I spoke to earlier. He could hardly contain his yawn.“
'47
”Some people believe it's better to know where the players are rather than spread them all over the community,“ I said. ”The maid told me a black woman named Ruthie Jean Fontenot brings the prostitutes to that nightclub, or whatever you want to call it.“ I looked at her, at the manic, pinched energy in her face and the bleached hair spiked on the ends, the eyes bright with either residual booze or black speed, and I didn't doubt that the Furies waited for Julia each morning inside her dresser mirror. ”I'll ask someone to look into it,“ I said. ”How kind.“
”Have I done something to offend you?“
”Of course not. You're a sweetie, Dave. I just wish I'd had a chance with you before Bootsie came along.“
”It's always good to see you, Julia.“ A few minutes later I watched through the window as she got into her yellow convertible and roared out into the traffic, her morning temporarily in place, as though reporting a crippled black woman to a rural sheriff's office had purged the earth of a great evil. I had a cup of coffee, opened my mail, and went to the lockup. Kelso was chewing on a soda straw and reading from a folder opened on his desk. At the top of a page I could see Sonny's name. ”Robicheaux, my man, work out something, get his bail reduced, go the bail yourself, let him box up worms out at your dock, he don't belong here,“ Kelso said. ”That's the way it shakes out sometimes, Kelso.“
”I got him in isolation like you as
ked, I'm even taking his food from my house to his cell. So what's he tell me? He wants to go back in main pop.“
”Bad idea.“
”He says it don't matter where I put him, his ticket's run out, he don't like small places. He wants to go back into main pop or he ain't gonna eat his food.“
”You've dealt with problem inmates before.“
”Here's the rest of it. My night man, he didn't make this cat Pogue, right, but now he says maybe he saw him around the jail earlier, maybe with some other guys. I go, “Why the fuck didn't you tell me this?” So now he says he don't remember anything, and besides that, his wife calls him in sick. I never had a hit in my jail, Robicheaux. You get this cocksucker out of here.“
I checked my weapon with Kelso, and a uniformed guard pulled the levers on a sliding barred door that gave onto a corridor of individual cells.
The guard walked me past three empty cells to the last one on the row and let me in.
Sonny sat on the edge of his bunk in his skivvies, one bare foot pulled up on the thin mattress. His body looked hard and white, the scars on his rib cage and chest like a network of dried purple lesions.
I lowered the bunk from the opposite wall on its chain and sat down.
”You want to square with me?“ I said.
”If you're here for absolution, I don't have the right collar for it,“
he said.
”Who says I need it?“
”You work for the Man, Dave. You know how things really are, but you still work for the Man.“
”I'm going to be hard on you, Sonny. I think that girl in St.
Martinville is dead because of you, so how about getting your nose out of the air for a while?“
He put both his feet on the concrete floor and picked up an apple from a paper plate that contained two uneaten sandwiches and a scoop of potato salad.
”You want it? Kelso brought it from his house,“ he said.
”You're really going on a hunger strike?“
He shrugged, let his eyes rove over the graffiti on the walls, looked at a cross somebody had scorched on the ceiling with a cigarette lighter. ”You're not a bad guy, Streak,“ he said.
”Help us. Maybe I can get you some slack.“
”Hey, how about some prune-o? The sweep-up slipped me some.“